Garrick never introduced a hero upon the scene without a flourish of trumpets,—nor shall we.

“Bid Harlequino decorate the stage

With all magnificence of decoration—

Giants and giantesses, dwarfs and pigmies,

Songs, dances, music, in their amplest order.

Mimes, pantomimes, and all the mimic motion

Of scene deceptiovisive and sublime!”

For St. Bartholomew makes his first bow in The Ancient Records of the Rounds.

The learned need not be told that a fair was originally a market for the purchase and sale of all sorts of commodities; and what care the unlearned for its derivation? For them it suffices that 'tis a market for fun. Our merry Prior of St. Bartholomew knowing the truth of the old proverb, that, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” mingled pastime with business, and put Momus into partnership with Mammon. For many years they jogged on together, somewhat doggedly, to be sure, for Momus was a fellow of uproarious merriment; and while Mammon, with furred gown and gold chain, was weighing atoms and splitting straws, Momus split the sides of his customers, and so entirely won them over to his jocular way of doing business, that Mammon was drummed out of the firm and the fair. But Mammon has had his revenge, by causing Momus to be confined to such narrow bounds, that his lions and tigers lack space to roar in, and his giants are pinched for elbow room. * Moreover, he and his sly bottle-holder, Mr. Cupidity Cant (who from the time of Prynne to the present has been a bitter foe to good fellowship), threaten to drive poor Momus out of house and home. Out upon the ungracious varlets! let them sand their own sugar, ** not ours! and leave Punch alone.

Let them be content to rant in their rostrums, and peep over their particular timber, lest we pillory the rogues, and make them peep through it!

Father RahÉre founded the Priory, Hospital, and Church of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, at the instigation ('tis said) of the saint himself, who appeared to him in Rome, whither he had repaired on a pilgrimage. We learn from the Cottonian MSS. that he “of te hawnted the Kyng's palice, and amo'ge the noysefull presse of that tumultuous courte, enforsed hymselfe with jolite and carnal suavitÉ: ther yn spectaclis, yn metys, yn playes, and other courtely mokkys and trifyllis, intruding he lede forth the besynesse of alle the daye.” He was a “pleasant witted gentleman,” and filled the post of minstrel to King Henry the First, which comprehended musician, improvisatore, jester, &c.; and Henry the Second granted to the monastery of St. Bartholomew (of which RahÉre was the first prior) the privilege of a three days' fair for the drapers and clothiers: hence Cloth Fair. His ashes rest under a magnificent tomb in the church of St. Bartholomew the Great. This beautiful shrine is still carefully preserved. How different has been the fate of the desecrated sepulchre of the “moral Gower,” which the Beetian Borough brawlers would have pounded, with their Ladye Chapel, to macadamise the road!

“It is worthy of observation,” (says Paul Hentzer, 1598,) “that every year when the Fair is held, it is usual for the Mayor to ride into Smithfield, dressed in his scarlet gown, and about his neck is a golden chain, besides that particular ornament that distinguishes the staple of the kingdom. He is followed by the Aldermen in scarlet gowns, and a mace and a cap are borne before him. Where the yearly fair is proclaimed a tent is placed, and after the ceremony is over the mob begin to wrestle before them, two at a time, and conquerors are rewarded by them by money thrown from the tent. After this, a parcel of live rabbits are turned loose among the crowd, and hunted by a number of boys, with great noise, &c. Before this time, also, there was an old custom for the Scholars of London to meet at this festival, at the Priory of St. Bartholomew, to dispute in logic and grammar, and upon a bank, under a tree, (!) the best of them were rewarded with bows and silver arrows? Bartholomew Fair, until about 1743, was held a fortnight; and the spacious area of Smithfield was filled with booths for drolls and interludes, in which many popular comedians of the time performed, from the merry reign of Mat Coppinger to the laughing days of Ned Shuter. Sir Samuel Fludyer, in 1762, and Mr. Alderman Bull, (not John Bull!) in 1774, enforced some stringent regulations that amounted almost to an abolition.”

And now, my merry masters! let us take a stroll into the ancient fair of St. Bartholomew, vulgo Bartlemy, with John Littlewit, the uxorious proctor; Win-the-fight Littlewit, his fanciful wife; Dame Purecraft, a painful sister: Zeal-of-the-land Busy, the puritan Banbury man; and our illustrious cicerone, rare Ben Jonson.

In the year 1614, and long before, one of the most delicious city dainties was a Bartholomew roast pig. * A cold turkey-pie and a glass of rich malmsey were “creature comforts” not to be despised even by such devout sons of self-denial as Mr. Zeal-of-the-land Busy, who always popped in at pudding-time. ** But Bartholomew pig, “a meat that is nourishing, and may be longed for,” that may be eaten, “very exceeding well eaten,” but not in a fair, was the ne plus ultra of savoury morsels: therefore Win-the-fight Little wit, with a strawberry breath, cherry lips, and apricot cheeks, the better half (not in folly!) of one of “the pretty wits of Paul's,” shams Abram, and pretends to long for it, in order to overcome the scruples and qualms of Dame Purecraft and the Banbury man, who, but for such longing, would have never consented to her visiting the fair.

The Rabbi being called upon by the dame to legalise roast pig, proposes that it shall be eaten with a reformed mouth, and not after the profane fashion of feeding; and, that the weak may be comforted, himself will accompany them to the fair, and eat exceedingly, and prophesy!

Among the minor delicacies of Ursula's * cuisine—Ursula, “uglye of clieare,” the pig-woman and priestess of St. Bartlemy, “all fire and fat!”—are tobacco, colt's-foot, bottled-ale, and tripes; and a curious picture of Smithfield manners is given in her instructions to Mooncalf to froth the cans well, jog the bottles o' the buttock, shink out the first glass ever, and drink with all companies.

We have an irruption of other popular characters into the fair, all in high keeping with the time and place:—a costard-monger; a gilt gingerbread woman; a mountebank; a corn-cutter; a wrestler; a cut-purse (a babe of booty, or child of the horn-thumb!); a gamester; a ballad-singer; an “ostler, trade-fallen a roarer (a swash-buckler, in later times a mohock); puppet-show keepers and watchmen; Bartholomew Cokes, a natural born fool and squire; Waspe, his shrewder serving-man; Overdo, a bacchanalian justice; a gang of gypsies, and their hedge-priest, patriarch of the cut-purses, or Patrico to the A bram men and their prickers and prancers; and lastly, Mr. Lanthorn Leatherhead, a supposed caricature of Inigo Jones, with whom Ben Jonson was associated in some of his magnificent court masques. All these characters exhibit their humours, and present a living picture of what Bartholomew Fair was in 1614. We have the exact dress of the flaunting City Madam—a huge velvet custard, or three-cornered bonnet; for these pretenders to sanctity not only adorned their outward woman with the garments of vanity, but were the principal dealers in feathers (another fashionable part of female dress in the days of Elizabeth and James I.) in the Blackfriars. All the merchandise of Babylon (i. e. the fair!) is spread out to our view; Jews-trumps, rattles, mousetraps, penny ballads, * purses, pin-cases, Tobie's dogs, “comfortable bread,” (spiced gingerbread,) hobbyhorses, drums, lions, bears, Bartholomew whistling birds, (wooden toys,) dolls, ** and Orpheus and his fiddle in gin-work! We have its cant phrases, mendacious tricks, and practical jokes; and are invited into “a sweet delicate booth,” with boughs, to eat roast pig with the fire o' juniper and rosemary branches; and “it were great obstinacy, high and horrible obstinacy, to decline or resist the good titillation of the famelic sense,” and not enter the gates of the unclean for once, with the liquorish Rabbi.

The sound beating of Justice Overdo, Waspe's elevation of Cokes on pick-back, and the final confutation of Zeal-of-the-land Busy, complete the humours of, and give the last finish-ing-touches to this authentic and curious picture of ancient Bartholomew Fair.

Bravo, Ben Jonson! Not the surly, envious, malignant Ben, but the rare, chÈre Bartlemy Fair Ben! the prince of poets! the king of good fellows! the learned oracle of the Mermaid and the Devil; * the chosen companion of the gallant Raleigh; the poetical father of many worthy adopted sons; and, to sum up emphatically thy various excellencies, the friend, “fellow” and elegiast of Shakspere!

Yes, thou didst behold him face to face! Great and glorious privilege! Thou his detractor! What a beauteous garland hast thou thrown upon his tomb! O for the solemn spirit of thy majestic monody, (“Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother”) the imagination of thy green “Underwoods,” to sing of thee, as thou hast sung of him!

The death of James I. (for Jamie was much addicted to sports, and loved the Puritans, as the Puritans and Lucifer love holy water!) was “a heavy blow, and a great discouragement” to the nation's jollity: and the troubles and treasons of the succeeding unhappy reign indisposed men's hearts to merriment, and turned fair England into a howling wilderness. Bartholomew Fair in 1641 * exhibits a sorry shadow of its joyous predecessor—'Tis Fat Jack, mountain of mirth! dwindled into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon! Zeal-of-the-land Busy had become rampant; and Dame Ursula, if the old lady yet lived, was most probably a reformed sister, and purveyor of roast pig to the Rabbi at home!

As a picture, it wants the vivid colouring of the former great painter. It seems to have been limned by a wet, or parcel puritan, a dead wall between pantile and puppet-show! Our first move is into Christ Church cloisters, “which are hung so full of pictures, that you would take that place, or rather mistake it, for St. Peter's in Rome. And now, being arrived through the long walke, to Saint Bartholomew's hospitall,” he draws a ludicrous picture of a “handsome wench” bartering her good name for “a moiety of bone-lace; a slight silver bodkin; a hoop-ring, or the like toye.” Proceeding into the heart of the fair, it becomes necessary that while one eye is watching the motion of the puppets, the other should look sharp to the pockets. “Here's a knave in a foole's coat, with a trumpet sounding, or on a drumme beating, invites you, and would faine persuade you to see his puppets; there is a rogue like a wild woodman, or in an antick-ship, like an incubus, desires your company to view his motion. On the other side, Hocus Pocus, with three yards of tape, or ribbon in's hand, shews his legerdemaine * to the admiration and astonishment of a company of cock-oloaches.

Amongst these you shall see a grey goose-cap (as wise as the rest) with a 'what do ye lacke?' in his mouth, stand in his boothe, shaking a rattle, or scraping on a fiddle, with which children are so taken that they presently cry out for these fopperies. And all these together make such a distracted noise that you would think Babel was not comparable to it. Here there are also your gamesters in action; some turning off a whimsey, others throwing for pewter, who can quickly dissolve a round shilling into a three-halfpenny saucer. Long Lane at this time looks very faire,-and puts on her best cloaths with the wrong side outward, so turn'd for their better turning off; and Cloth Faire is now in great request; well fare the ale-houses therein; yet better may a man fare (but at a dearer rate) in the Pig-market, alias Pasty-nooke, or Pye-corner, where pigges are al houres of the day on the stalls, piping hot, and would cry (if they could speak) 'come eat me.'” The chronicler calls over the coals a “fat greasie hostesse” for demanding an additional shilling for a pig's head when a lady's longing is in the case; inveighs against the unconscionable exactions, and excessive inflammations of reckonings, and concludes with a reiterated and rhyming caution:—

“Now farewell to the Faire; you who are wise,

Preserve your purses, whilst you please your eyes.” *

The restoration of King Charles II. threw England into a transport of joy. Falstaff had not more his bellyfull of Ford, than had the nation of Jack Presbyter. **

Merry bells, roasted rumps, the roar of cannon, the crackling of bonfires, and the long-continued shouts of popular ecstacy proclaimed his downfall; the Maypole was crowned with the garlands of spring; in the temples devoted to Thalia and Melpomene * were again heard the divine inspirations of the dramatic muse; the light fantastic toe tripped it nimbly to the sound of the pipe and tabor, and St. Bartholomew, his—

—rope-dancers, and trumpeters, * were all alive and merry at the fair.

The austere reign of the cold and selfish William of Nassau diminished nothing of its jollity. Thomas Cotterell “from the King's Arm's Tavern, Little Lincoln's Fields,” kept the King's Arms Music Booth in Smithfield; and one Martin transferred his sign of “The Star” from Moor-fields, to the Rounds. At this time flourished a triumvirate of Bartlemy heroes too remarkable to be passed lightly over, Mat Coppinger, Joe Haynes, and Thomas Dogget.

The pranks, cheats, and conceits of Coppinger are recorded in an unique tract ** of considerable freedom and fun.

His famous part was the cook-maid in “Whittington,” Bartholomew Fair droll. The last September of his life he acted a Judge there, little dreaming that in the ensuing February he should be brought before one, (for stealing a watch and seven pounds in money,) and sent on a pilgrimage to Tyburn-tree! He was a poet, and wrote a volume * of adulatory verses, calculated for the meridian of the times in which he lived. The following is the comical trick he put upon a countryman in Bartholomew Fair.

The company (i. e. strolling players) finding the country too warm for them, came with our spark to town, in expectation of recruiting their finances by the folly of such as should resort to Bartholomew Fair.

Upon the credit of which they took a lodging in Smithfield, and made shift to get up a small booth to shew juggling tricks in, the art of hocus pocus, and pouder-le-pimp. The score being deep on all hands, the people clamouring for money, and customers coming but slowly in, they consulted how to rub off, and give their creditors the bag to hold. To this Coppinger dissented, saying he would find out the way to mend this dulness of trading; and he soon effected it by a lucky chance. A country fellow, on his return from Newgate-market on horseback, resolving to have a gape at Jack Pudding, sat gazing, with his mouth at half-cock; and, so intent was he, that his senses seemed to be gone wool-gathering. Coppinger, whispering some of his companions, they stept to “Tom Noddies” horse, one of them ungirthing him, and taking off the bridle, the reins of which the fellow held in his hand, they bore him on the pack-saddle on each side, and led the horse sheer from under him; whilst another with counterfeit horns, and a vizard, put his head out of the head-stall, and kept nodding forwards, so that “Ninny” verily supposed, by the tugging of the reins, that he was still on “cock-horse!” The signal being given, they let him squash to the ground, pack-saddle and all; when, terrified at the sight of the supposed devil he had got in a string, and concluding Hocus Pocus had conjured his horse into that antic figure, he scrambled up, and betaking him to his heels back into the country, frightened his neighbours with dismal stories that Dr. Faustus and Friar Bacon were alive again, and transforming horses into devils in Bartholomew Fair! The tale, gathering as it spread, caused the booth to be thronged; which piece of good-luck was solely attributable to Coppinger's ingenuity.

Original

Plain Joe Haynes, * the learned Doctor Haynes, or the dignified Count Haynes,—for by these several titles he was honourably distinguished,—was the hero of a variety of vagabondical adventures both at home and abroad.

He is the first comedian who rode an ass upon the stage. He acted the mountebank, Waltho Van Clutterbank, High German, chemical, wonder-working doctor and dentifricator, and spoke his famous “Horse-doctor's harangue” to the mob. He challenged a celebrated quack called “The Unborn Doctor,” at the town of Hertford, on a market-day, to have a trial of skill with him. Being both mounted on the public stage, and surrounded by a numerous auditory eager to hear this learned dispute, Joe desired that each might stand upon a joint stool. “Gentlemen,” said Joe, “I thank you for your good company, and hope soon to prove how grossly you have been deceived by this arch-impostor. I come hither neither to get a name, nor an estate: the first, by many miraculous cures performed in Italy, Spain, Holland, France, and England, per totum terrarium, orbem, has long been established. As to the latter, those Emperors, Kings, and foreign potentates, whom I have snatched from the gaping jaws of death, whose image I have the honour to wear (showing several medals), have sufficiently rewarded me. Besides, I am the seventh son of a seventh son; so were my father and grandfather. To convince you, therefore, that what I affirm is truth, I prognosticate some heavy judgment will fall on the head of that impudent quack. May the charlatan tumble ingloriously, while the true doctor remains unhurt!” At which words, Haynes's Merry-Andrew, who was underneath the stage, with a cord fast to B———'s stool, just as B-was going to stutter out a reply, pulled the stool from under him, and down he came; which, passing for a miracle, Joe was borne home to his lodging in triumph, and B———hooted out of the town. *

Some of Doctor Haynes's miraculous mock cures, were the Duchess of Boromolpho of a cramp in her tongue; the Count de Rodomontado of a bilious passion, after a surfeit of buttered parsnips; and Duke Philorix of a dropsy—of which he died! He invites his patients to the “Sign of the Prancers,” in vico vulgo dicto, Rattlecliffero, something south-east of Templum Danicum in the Square of Profound-Close, not far from “Titter-Tatter Fair!” He was a good-looking fellow, of singular accomplishments, and in great request among the ladies. “With the agreeableness of my mien, ** the gaiety of my conversation, and the gallantry of my dancing, I charmed the fair sex wherever I came.

'Signor Giusippe,'” (he was now Count Haynes!) “says one, 'when will you help me to string my lute? Signor Giusippe,' says another, 'shall we see you at night in the grotto behind the Duke's palace?' 'Signor Giusippe,' says a third, 'when will you teach me the last new song you made for the Prince of Tuscany?' and so, i' faith they Giusipped me, till I had sworn at least to a dozen assignations.”

His waggery was amusing to all who were not the butts of it. He once kept a merchant that had a laced-band which reached from shoulder to shoulder, two good hours in a coffee-house near the Exchange, while he explained the meaning of chevaux de frize; telling him there were horses in Frize-land that were bullet-proof! At another time he parleyed with a grocer a full quarter of an hour in the street, inquiring which was the near est way from Fleet Street to the Sun Tavern in Piccadilly; whether down the Strand, and so by Charing Cross; or through Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent-Garden? though the simpleton declared his spouse sent him post-haste for a doctor, and—for all that Joe knew—made him lose an heir-apparent to “some dozen pounds of raisins, as many silver apostle spoons, Stow's London, and Speed's Chronicle.”

His astonished father-confessor, while listening to his sham catalogue of frightful enormities, looked as death-like as a frolicsome party of indigo porters in a dark cellar, by the melancholy light of burnt brandy! “For,” said the penitent wag, “last Wednesday I stole a consecrated bell from one of St. Anthony's holy pigs, and coined it into copper farthings! Such a day I pinned a fox's tail on a monk's cowl; and passing by an old gentlewoman sitting in her elbow-chair by the door, reading 'The Spiritual Carduus-posset for a Sinner's Belly-Ache,” (this, saving our noble comedian's presence, is more after the fashion of Rabbi Busy, than Friar Peter!) “I abstracted her spectacles from off her venerable purple nose, and converted them to the profane use of lighting my tobacco by the sunshine.”

“Hark!” said Mr. Bosky, as a voice of cock-crowing cacchination sounded under his window, “there is my St. Bartlemy-tide chorister. For twenty years has Nestor Nightingale proclaimed the joyous anniversary with a new song.” And having thrown up the sash, he threw down his accustomed gratuity, and was rewarded with

THE INQUISITIVE FARMER, OR HARLEQUIN HANGMAN.=

Harlequin, taking a journey to Bath,

Put up at an inn with his dagger of lath.

He supp'd like a lord,—on a pillow of down

He slept like a king, and he snored like a clown.

Boniface said, as he popp'd in his head,

“In that little crib by the side of your bed,

As honest a farmer as e'er stood in shoes,

(My chambers are full) would be glad of a snooze.”

The farmer began, as in clover he lay,

To talk of his clover, his corn-rigs, and hay,

His bullocks, his heifers, his pigs, and his wife;

Not a wink could our Harlequin get for his life.

He reckon'd his herds, and his flocks, and his fleece,

And drove twice to market his ducks and his geese;

He babbled of training, and draining, and scythes,

And hoeing, and sowing, and taxes, and tithes.

“To the fair do you carry a pack, or a hunch?

Are you mountebank doctor, or pedlar, or Punch?

What is your calling? and what is your name?

Are you single, or married,—or coward, or game?”

Poor Harlequin, fretting, lay silent and still,

While the farmer's glib tongue went as fast as a mill.

“Where are you going? and whence do you come?

How long do you tarry?—the deuce! are you dumb?”

“I'm the hangman” said Harlequin, sir, of the town;

I cut in the morning a highwayman down;

And fix in the market-place up, for a flag,

To-morrow his head, which I bear in my bag!”

The talkative farmer jump'd up in a fright—

(“If you look for the bag, friend, it lies on your right!”)

Ran out of the chamber, and roar'd for the host,

Shrieking, and shaking, and pale as a ghost!

Boniface listen'd, bolt upright in bed,

To the cock-and-bull story of hangman and head;

And then caught the mountebank, snug on his back,

Holding his sides, which were ready to crack!

Loud laugh'd the landlord at Harlequin's trick.

“As soon,” cry'd the farmer, “I'd sup with Old Nick,

As sleep in this room with that gibbetting wag,

With a head on his shoulders, and one in his bag!”

“Bravo, Nestor!” said the LaurÉat of Little Britain; “Norah Noclack (as the taciturn old lady has grown musical) will draw thee a cup of ale for thy ditty, and make thee free of the buttery.”

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.